Caracterização molecular e citológica de diferentes populações geográficas de Simulium guianense

Abstract

The species Simulium guianense s.l. Wise is incriminated as the main vector of Onchocerca volvulus Leuckart, which is the ethiologic agent of oncocerciasis in the Amazonian focus of the disease, located in the northern portion of South América. The objectives of this study were to analyze different populations of this species using polythene chromosomes and mitochondrial gene sequences of the COI region to evaluate the relationships among these populations. The specimens for the cytotaxonomic study were collected in the Brazilian states of Amazonas, São Paulo and Goiás (Rio Ponte de Pedra) and for the molecular study the specimens were collected in the states of Amazonas, Amapá, Goiás (Rios Ponte de Pedra and Verdão), Maranhão and Roraima (one population from the Homoxi oncocerciasis focus and two from sites outside of the focus: Caroebe and Surumu). The polythene chromosomes from the analyzed populations were compared with a standard map that had been previously established for this species. The cytological analysis indicates the presence of polymorphic inversion in the Amazonas and São Paulo populations; the population from Goiás (Rio Ponte de Pedras) had two fixed inversions. Comparing 702 bp from the COI mithochondrial gene in the nine studied populations, a considerable number of polymorphic sites were observed, thereby allowing population and phylogeographic analyses to be undertaken. A representative cladogram was constructed to analyse the relationships among the observed haplotypes. The cladogram suggests that the populations from the northern region of Brazil (Amapá, Amazonas and the Caroebe site in Roraima) share one haplotype, while the populations from the Amazonian focus (Homoxi site in Roraima) is most closely related to the population from the Surumu site in Roraima, as these populations share a common haplotype. The populations from São Paulo and Goiás, Rio Verdão (from the southeast and centro-west regions of Brazil, respectively) have high haplotypic variability, each specimen being represented by one haplotype. The population from the Rio Ponte de Pedra site in Goiás did not share haplotypes with any of the other populations studied, including the population from the Rio Verdão site in Goiás, located approximately 50 Km away in the same hydrological basin. The populations from Amazonas and the Caroebe site in Roraima had negative values of F ST, suggesting that they exchange alleles freely and do not show any genetic structure. The population from Maranhão is well sructured in relation to the others with a low number of migrants; this population appears to be derived from the population in São Paulo. The NJ phylogeographic tree constructed using the F ST values indicates the division of the analyzed populations into two groups separated by the Amazon River. The northern group is represented by the populations in Amapá, Roraima (Surumu, Homoxi and Caroebe) and Amazonas, while the southern group is represented by Maranhão, the Rio Verdão site in Goiás, and São Paulo. The results obtained by cytological and molecular techniques suggested that the S. guianense s.l. populations analyzed, in general, do not constitute a species complex, as has been suggested by some authors, even though the populations had high genetic variability. The only exception is the population from Goiás (Rio Ponte de Pedra), which probably represents a species that is new to science.